Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/208

Rh ten years old, accompanied him, and I was much amused with the nimble way in which she undid and then rebraided her hair. The use of a comb she did not know until I gave her one and showed her. As for the father, I found him very intelligent, and, through Tookoolito, who acted as my interpreter, he gave me much geographical information. Another of our visitors was Puto, the mother of a white child. This woman had once been considered handsome, and even now showed some signs of her former beauty. She was about 35 years old, and, though she had a hard time of it alone, supporting herself and child, yet she was generally cheerful, smart, kind, and industrious. On one of my visits to Tookoolito's igloo, Puto with her child was there, and I then witnessed the operation—very rarely performed—of washing a child's face. This was done by licking it all over, much as a dog would do the hand that had just contained a fresh beefsteak. She did this twice while in my presence, and the true colour of the child's face was then more clearly seen. Owing to some cause or other which I could only surmise, Puto suffered more from various privations than the other women. She was often a week with hardly anything to eat, and, in consequence, her poor child was nearly starved. On the occasion I now refer to, after I had left the igloo and wandered about to other dwellings, I came across Charley and Ebierbing, just arrived with a sledge-load of frozen krang, whale-meat, for the dogs. Puto at the moment also came to the spot, and immediately asked for some. They gave her about twenty-five pounds of it; and this she slung on her back, along with a pack of equal weight already there, besides the child! Ye mothers of America! what say you to taking an infant, besides an additional pack of fifty pounds on your back, and starting off on a tramp of several miles—such was the distance to Puto's home—with the thermometer 40° or 45° below the freezing point? This, however, reminds me that at the same time I was